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French President François Hollande arrived in Moscow for a surprise meeting with Vladimir Putin to discuss the crisis in Ukraine, one of the first Western leaders to visit the Russian president since the annexation of Crimea.

LISBON, Portugal — Vladimir Putin's timing can be impeccable. His recent visit to Turkey, a key NATO ally, was perfectly timed to undermine a show of unity by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization the following day.

Nothing is better for Russian propaganda than some good old fashioned American disorder.

Two days after the battles in Grozny between Chechen security personnel and militants claiming to act at the behest of Chechen insurgency wing commander Khamzat (Aslan Byutukayev), the North Caucasus insurgency leadership still has not formally claimed responsibility for the attack or clarified its objective. It has hitherto been accepted practice that such a claim of responsibility would be posted within days on one of the insurgency websites. Just hours after the first shots were fired early on December 4, a two-minute video clip was posted on YouTube in which a man claiming to be one of the fighters at large in Grozny identified them as having pledged loyalty to Ali Abu-Muhammad, the Avar theologian who was chosen as early this year to succeed Doku Umarov as Caucasus Emirate leader. Speaking in Chechen, the man said that "many" fighters had penetrated the city on orders from Amir Khamzat, and had already killed "many" of the enemy, destroyed vehicles, and seized larger quantities of weaponry than they could carry away. But in an implicit contradiction, he also said this was a suicide mission and "we shall fight to the death." Chechen parliament speaker Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov dismissed that video and other footage filmed by Grozny residents as fakes "filmed far from Grozny and long before today." The speaker in the video footage did not mention either of the two buildings the fighters occupied: the main press building and a school a few blocks away. That raises the question whether seizing the buildings was part of the original battle plan or, as the daily "Kommersant" suggests, a spontaneous decision after the vehicles in which some of the fighters were traveling were flagged down by traffic police with whom they then exchanged fire. Unconfirmed reports claim separate groups of fighters also tried to occupy the Grozny university building and the State Drug Control Agency. According to “Kommersant,” the fighters who occupied the two buildings were planning to rendez-vous with comrades in arms in Grozny’s northern Staropromyslovsky district in order to carry out a large-scale attack. It seems equally plausible, however, that the occupation of two buildings close to each other in the city center was a deliberate diversion intended to concentrate the largest number of security personnel there for the longest possible time period to enable other fighters to attack secondary targets elsewhere in the city. The reports that gunfire continued in more than one location for several hours after the gunbattles at the press building and school were over suggests that this is indeed what happened, even though the Chechen authorities have not confirmed that fighting took place elsewhere in the city. Speaking late on December 5 [http://www.chechnya.gov.ru/page.php?r=126&id=15984], Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov gave a total casualty figure of 14 police and security personnel killed and 36 wounded. The previous evening, Russia's National Antiterror Committee had cited a figure [http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/253511/] of 10 killed and 28 wounded. It is not clear whether either or both sets of figures refer only to casualties in the initial shootout when police sought to intercept the fighters and in the subsequent fighting in which the militants reportedly deployed mortars and grenade throwers, or whether the larger figure also includes casualties incurred during fighting elsewhere in the city. In a similar attack on Grozny in August 2004 [http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/61036/], a detachment of up to 400 Chechen resistance fighters killed 54 police and security personnel before withdrawing. Whether or not the December 4 attack proceeded strictly according to plan, it accomplished at least four important objectives. First, it demonstrated that the Chechen insurgency wing is still a force to be reckoned with, even after Umarov's death, and notwithstanding militants' failure to stage the widely anticipated terrorist attack(s) on the Sochi Winter Olympic Games in February. Second, it has demolished Kadyrov's repeated assertions that no more than a handful of militants remain in Chechnya. When the fighting began in the small hours of December 4, Kadyrov's first reaction was to argue that the participants must have entered Chechnya from one of the neighboring republics, as the Chechen insurgency wing was no longer strong enough to undertake such an attack. The following day, he claimed [http://www.chechnya.gov.ru/page.php?r=126&id=15984] the attack was organized by Umarov's brother Akhmat. Kadyrov said he will seek Akhmat Umarov's extradition from Turkey, where according to Kadyrov he currently lives. While Kadyrov and other Chechen officials seek to give the impression that the fighters numbered no more than a dozen (11 bodies have reportedly been recovered, seven of them from the press building), Grozny residents estimate the total number of militants involved at 100-300. But even if there were only 80-100 of them, it is logical to assume that the total Chechen insurgency man-power is at least three times that number, and possibly more: No sane commander would risk deploying his entire army in an attack of that kind. Third, by seizing the nine-story press building and the school at an hour when they were empty, the occupying fighters induced the Chechen security forces to use against them heavy artillery that effectively wrecked both structures. In addition, the Berkat market close to the press building was severely damaged by fire [http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/253488/]. And fourth, assuming that the seizure of the two buildings was intended purely as a diversion, it provided the fighters who engaged in gunbattles with police and security personnel elsewhere in the city with valuable experience in urban warfare. They may also have replenished their arsenal, as the speaker in the video footage claimed. In that respect, it is conceivable that the December 4 attack was intended simply as a trial run. In video footage uploaded in August [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9KhNTDM0ng], veteran Chechen commander Makhran Saidov said that "today we are not strong enough to liberate the city [of Grozny], but we believe that tomorrow we shall have [the necessary] strength." -- Liz Fuller

»Hollande in Surprise Visit to Moscow06/12/14 12:12 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from WSJ.com: World News. French President François Hollande arrived in Moscow for a surprise meeting with Vladimir Putin to discuss the crisis in Ukraine, one of the first Western leaders to visit the Russian ...

»The End of Illusions06/12/14 12:10 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Home - Institute of Modern Russia. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 signaled the end of the Cold War. According to writer Alexander Podrabinek, over the last quarter-century, most Western democ...

»Ukraine Pays Russia For Future Gas06/12/14 12:06 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. Ukraine's state energy firm Naftogaz said late on December 5 that it had transferred a prepayment of $378 million to Russia's Gazprom for gas shipments in December.

»British Women to Fight on Front Line06/12/14 10:13 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Breitbart Feed. Women will soon be allowed to fight alongside men on the front line as the government looks to relax restrictions on them joining infantry regiments. A six month study into whether women ar...

»Obesity05/12/14 18:17 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Uploads by AFP news agency. Obesity Obesity and extreme obesity can reduce life expectancy by up to eight years and deprive people of as much as 19 years of good health, according to a study published on F...

»Putin is the problem05/12/14 17:07 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Russian news, all the latest and breaking Russia news. Russia's president cannot blame the West for the consequences of his own reckless aggression

»Georgia and Russia - The Economist05/12/14 16:57 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Russia - Google News. The Economist Georgia and Russia The Economist RUSSIA'S unacknowledged war in Ukraine did not start with the annexation of Crimea. The precedent was set six years earlier, during a fi...

»Podcast: The State Of The Empire05/12/14 16:47 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. As Vladimir Putin addressed his nation this week, the ruble plummeted. Critics say that was a fitting metaphor as Russia faces a looming recession as the costs of Putin's...

»Azerbaijan Jails Khadija Ismayilova05/12/14 16:35 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. Khadija Ismayilova, a prominent investigative journalist who contributes to RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service, has been sentenced by a court in Baku to two months of pretrial ...

Omar Mateen and 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting - The Dots, The Darkness, and The Mirrors, part 2

Quotes and Questions for Investigations

THE DARKNESS OF THE LOWLY TRUTHS

9/11 and Russia – connecting the dots - by Michael Novakhov

FBI on a couch: problems and solutions: FBI as a domestic intelligence service

The American KGB and the Comey's visions: can Hoover's COINTELPRO thugs be transformed into the modern counterintelligence officers? | M.N.: The American KGB wants to take over the US government. Oy, gevalt! Maybe, it is the time to order a ticket to Madagascar.. - Quotes and Comments

What is wrong with the FBI?

The Kiryas Joel affair: "Sexual abuse" or FBI abuse? | Michael Ameri's suicide as a protest against the FBI: What is wrong with the FBI: its strategy, tactics, techniques and methods if they lead to these unexpected and tragic results?

Kiryas Joel: "Sexual abuse" or FBI abuse?

Is there a general attempt to mislead and to manipulate the FBI using the issues of sexual abuse as a pretext, as a way to deal with the political and other opponents?

Investigate the "investigators"! Part 2: FBI as "a high church for the true mediocre"

Investigate the "investigators"! FBI as "a high church for the true mediocre"

"At bottom, I mean profoundly at bottom, the FBI has nothing to do with Communism, it has nothing to do with catching criminals, it has nothing to do with the Mafia, the syndicate, it has nothing to do with trust-busting, it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it has nothing to do with anything but serving as a church for the mediocre. A high church for the true mediocre." Norman Mailer | "Investigate the "investigators"! I would think that no less than 50% of the problems this country is facing is due to the FBI's inadequacy. This is a very important issue and the time has come to address it." - by Michael Novakhov